Closeted
by crushed by a dandelion
Summary: He is their child! Their flesh and blood! Stan has always been a good child! I mean,” Cartman said, “It’s not Stan’s fault he was born a freak.”Gravely, seriously, Kyle nodded.Stan's closeted. In so many more ways than one. M for langcrappiness
1. Chapter 1

**Closeted**

**Chapter 1: Un-closeted**

**0o0**

Stan, like most people in South Park, hated Cartman. And, like most people in South Park, he hated Cartman even more when he was _right._ Which was far too often for his liking.

Like that one time where he said no one, not even a Jew, could beat Japanese kids at math. Stan had put aside all stereotypes and trusted in himself... He'd done the right thing! And still those goddamn Japanese kids beat Kyle at math! By one... freaking... decimal point!

So, Cartman told him if he didn't stop being a, as he put it, "white bread, animal-loving gaywad" he was going to start playing piano.

Five months later, Stan developed an inexplicable talent and a love for the piano.

His hatred for Cartman could only grow. It would grow and grow, it would break the fucking sky. He had once made the mistake of thinking he couldn't hate Cartman any more than he did. Never again. His hate for Cartman could not be contained. It could not be measured on any conventional scale. It was unfathomable. It was bigger than this world. It was reaching the ends of the universe, and it just kept going.

He did try to hide his talent: he would send his parents fake "You won a $5 trip to the grocery store!" letters and send them out of the house, or he'd give them a gift certificate to a restaurant that would expire in five minutes... or his personal favorite, he would get the house fumigated and mysteriously disappear (it was actually not that hard to play the piano with a gas mask on)... things like that. Once the car pulled out of the drive, Stan was at the piano, playing chords and teaching himself what suspensions were. He bought loads and loads of CDs (out of his hoarded allowance money: He knew Kyle's Jew tactics would come in handy some day) and learned to play along with them. And what really bit him was that he was _good_.

As a result, he spent all of five months trying to make sure no one on the planet Earth found out.

Unfortunately, Cartman had an annoying habit of finding out people's deepest and darkest secrets, so when he barged into Stan's house for free beer (without knocking!) Stan just happened to be playing a Bach concerto that he'd memorized.

Maybe it would have been better if he had playing something really _straight,_ like, whatever. Anything. Even Fall Out Boy or something. He'd just finished figuring it out, anyway. But trust Cartman to come in, screaming with laughter, while he was playing _Bach._

"I knew it!" he gasped, leaning against the doorway for support. "Oh, man, I knew you'd end up like this!" Stan folded his arms.

"Okay, fine. I admit it." Stan shrugged. "You were right." Cartman continued to laugh.

"Cartman, you were right. Okay? I was wrong." Stan said, growing angrier by the second. "I admitted it! Stop laughing, or--"

And then... to Stan's eternal surprise... He did. Cartman. Stopped laughing. At him.

_The_ Eric Cartman did what Stan asked him to and shut up.

"I'm sorry, Stan," he said sincerely, flopping onto the couch across from Stan.

Stan turned his head to look at Cartman from the corner of his eye. He played with the knobs on the piano bench.

"You're... what?"

"Sorry. I shouldn't have laughed."

Stan sat back, knowing that throwing Cartman out was not an option. Cartman loved his devious plans, but he loved telling people about them even more. Stan knew this for a fact, because Cartman's plan for getting ten million dollars by a serious of complicated events that involved him bungee jumping onto the set of _Grey's Anatomy_ had been completely destroyed by his unfortunate disability to keep his fat mouth shut, and the fact that there _was_ a God.

"Stan, it's okay. We all have these... weird, freakish little hamster skeletons in the closet. When... when did you realize?"

"I was just watching Shelley butcher another piece and then... I... well, I couldn't help it. It was just standing there, it was like it was... calling for me. I _had_ to go and play it! I couldn't stay away!" He glared at his friend—er, beer-mooching acquaintance. "And I know you said it'd happen, and I admitted it did, so shut up."

"Stan," Cartman said quietly. "Are you ashamed of this?" Stan, forgetting it was _Eric Cartman_ he was talking to, looked away self-consciously.

"Well," he said slowly, "It just... My parents..." He folded his arms closer to his stomach. "I mean, for Shelley, it's okay, but my dad, he'd _destroy_ me. He loves me, but he would let me turn out like this." Cartman stood and took Stan's slender, piano-playing fingers (aka: girlie fingers) into his own square, manly ones.

"It's alright, Stan," he said. "I myself have been... trapped in the closet. I know what it feels like."

Cartman should not have said that. He definitely should _not_ have said that, because that was what he'd said when he had tricked a police officer into having sex with a horse in front of a camera, and Stan remembered it. So his cloud of self-pity came crashing down and he snatched his girlie hand away from Cartman's square, boyish one.

"What do I have to pay you not to tell anyone?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothing, Stan," Cartman said, looking genuinely shocked. "If you don't want me to tell, I won't. Swear to God!"

"You've used God as an excuse to get a million dollars more than twenty times."

"Stan, just--ugh--okay?" Cartman said, holding up his hands. "I'm your god damn _friend_, Stan. I thought... I thought you'd have just a little more trust in me." He cast his eyes down. Stan tilted his head and blinked.

After a long silence, he said, "But you're _Cartman_."

"I'm your friend!"

"No, you're _Cartman._"

"Friend!"

"Cartman!"

"_Friend!"_

Stan waited for the town to learn about his mysterious talent. He spent every nervous second waiting for the other shoe to drop, every moment in front of the television waiting for the devastating newsflash.

He must have wasted a week that way, and Cartman never did drop another shoe, so to speak.

"Cartman, we need to talk."

Cartman bristled, that was what _girls_ said when they wanted to break up. But this was Stan, and Cartman was doing whatever he could to get on Stan's good side.

"Sure, Stan," he said amiably, pasting a wide smile onto his face. "Just let me put away my history stuff." He chucked an armload of papers that had nothing to with the history of Egypt and everything to do with the history of a murder last week that had maybe been his fault. He slammed his locker and twirled the combination lock before looking at Stan.

"So..." he said. "What do you want? To talk about?" he added quickly.

"This whole playing the piano thing..." Stan said, yanking the zipper on his jacket awkwardly. "I mean... you're really not gonna tell, are you?"

"Stan," Cartman said, clapping Stan on the shoulder. "You are my _friend_. Would I do that to you after you told me specifically _not_ to?"

"Is your name Cartman?"

"Yes." Cartman had a feeling he knew where this conversation was going.

"Then, you would."

"I wouldn't!" Cartman snarled. Being nice to Stan was harder than it looked. How did Kyle do it? He composed himself with a deep breath through his nose. "Stan, I'm not the nicest person in the world, but I don't want to see you miserable."

"You just want dirt on me so you blackmail me later."

"Stan, don't be--"

"Well, I don't care!"

"Listen to me--"

"I'm coming out!"

"You're what?"

"I'm going public!" Stan yelped. Cartman backed away slowly.

"Huh?"

"I mean it! I'm for real!" Stan told all the people staring at him.

"But... wait a sec..."

"I don't care any more! I can't stand hiding it any longer!" People were whispering. "All this time," Stan said, "Hiding under my cover of a normal, soulless, hip-hop loving teen... I can't do it anymore! I just can't!"

"But... what? Of all the..." Cartman stuttered. "...What the _hell?_"

**0o0**

Stan walked down the hall, shoulders back, chin lifted high. Everyone whispered behind their hands, pointing, shaking their heads...

Except for Kyle, who was, always had been, a little slow to catch on.

"W'sup, Stan?" he said, not even giving Stan's shirt a second glance. Stan shook his head.

"Nothing. Notice anything... new?

"Um..." Kyle looked hard at Stan. "You combed your hair?"

"No, dumbass, look at my shirt!" Stan snapped. Kyle lifted his hands in surrender and looked at Stan's shirt.

"Pink... Piano?" he asked. "Out and proud?" His eyes widened and he looked incredulously at Stan.

Stan crossed his arms defiantly. "You got a problem?" he asked. Kyle raised his hands (surrendering is always the best thing to do when faced with a newly converted bad boy with a pink piano ironed on the chest of his shirt).

"No, man, I'm cool. But do your... parents know about this yet?"

"You mean the parents who promised they loved me, and then turned around and all but enslaved me to "black" music? You mean the same parents who slapped all their failed dreams on me, and hated me when I couldn't fulfill them? Those people? Who needs them? Who cares? God dammit, if I want to play piano, I'll play the god damn piano! If they can't accept me just because I can't play bass guitar, well, fuck them!"

Kyle looked at him for a moment. Then, Kyle slapped his forehead into his hand. Loudly. Because he knew Stan's parents almost as well as he knew Stan, and by Stan's reaction, he would guess...

"They kicked you out of the house."

"It's not—"

"They kicked you out of the house." 

"I only—"

"They kicked you out of the house, **_DIDN'T THEY_**, Stan_."_

"... Yeah."

**0o0**

"Whoa... how'd you get _Wendy's_ parents to let you stay over at her house?" Kenny asked.

"What?" Cartman snapped, taking sudden interest in the conversation.

Stan took a sloppy bite of turkey and gravy (or dog food). "They don't know."

"What, you sneaked in using disguises?" Cartman asked, voice rising. That had been _his_ idea!

"No, they're in Hawaii," Stan elaborated. "I don't think they're the types to let homeless people crash on their couch anyway."

"But, dude," Kyle said, "Wendy's your _girlfriend_. You're supposed to be able to crash on her couch… it's like, a law. I mean-- her parents should be cool with it." Stan looked at Kyle for about ten seconds, before exploding into laughter.

"I don't think you've ever met Wendy's parents. They'd _kill_ Wendy if they found out her boyfriend was a homeless tramp."

"Well, it's not _your_ fault," Kyle snapped. "I mean, what the hell kind of parents throw their kid out just because he doesn't play bass?"

Cartman realized, _he_ was supposed to be the one sucking up to Stan.

"Yeah!" he chimed in. "I mean, just because _they _couldn't doesn't mean they should love Stan any less! He is their child! Their flesh and blood! Stan has always been a good child! He's never scorned them, or tried... deliberately…. to ruin their lives. He loves them unconditionally, and they should shower him with unconditional love whether he is a piano player or a goat lover or a normal kid!"

Cartman raised his fist. Everyone in the cafeteria stared at him.

Maybe he'd overdone it...?

Stan stared silently at his lunch (or dog food). "I..." he said. "I didn't..." He blinked rapidly. Then he pushed away from the table.

"I'll see you," he said in a choked voice, and fled from the lunchroom, a victim…. Shying away… from a predator.

Cartman lowered his fist and shook his head.

"It's _wrong_," he said, voice breaking. "It's just _not right_." Kyle averted his eyes, because he agreed.

"I mean," Cartman said, "It's not _Stan's_ fault he was born a freak."

Gravely, seriously, Kyle nodded.

"Stan?" Kyle called through the empty halls of the school. "Stan, come on. Your parents will realize everything Cartman said was true..." Kyle stopped and looked over both shoulders, and the ceiling for someone else.

"Did _I_ say that?" he muttered. "Anyway, Stan... I..."

His voice faltered as he found Stan standing lifelessly (but breathing) in front of his locker.

"Oh, God..." he whispered. "S-Stan?" Stan was trembling slightly, transfixed. His voice was weak. Kyle could nearly reach out and break it.

"I...I can't believe it," Stan said quietly. "I knew South Park wasn't an... an accepting town, but this? I..." He waved his hand towards his locker. Kyle couldn't look away from the ugly red paint, the words sloppily ripping Stan's heart to pieces.

"It... it isn't my fault!" Stan said, turning to Kyle. "I was born this way... I can't help it!" Tears were welling in Stan's eyes, his gaze was desperate as he searched for some kind of answer in his best friend.

"If I could change it," Stan said, "If I could stop playing. If I could curb my desire. If I could love a different instrument, I would." He crossed his arms and looked to the ceiling, biting his lip. "But I can't. And my parents… can't accept that."

He broke.

Kyle did the only thing he could. He gathered Stan up in his arms and held him, tears in his own eyes as he read, over and over, the bitter words on Stan's locker.

**go to hell fcking key dancer**

Some gay people had gotten the wrong idea and had written, in permanent marker, **It's okay if you're gay **and **LBGT meeting on Thursday in the cafetorium.**

Kyle walked Stan home that day.

_To be continued..._

**0o0**

**Disclaimer: YEAH, WELL, NEITHER DO YOU!**

**crushed by a dandelion is not responsible for your eyes bleeding, loss of limb, life, lawyers, or backyard trampolines.**

**a/N:**

**Ah… the trials and tribulations of pianists… please try to keep in mind that this _is_ South Park, and I'm trying to keep every bit of drama it deserves. So I'm doing what I think Parker and Stone would do if South Park was a novel as opposed to a TV show (Which would be SWEET by the way because I've read some of the scripts to the movie and they're REALLY REALLY funny).**

**And, yes, M&T could have done it better, but in the immortal words of Eric Cartman: "What-_evah._ I do what I wawnt, bitch!"**

**Words to live by.**

**SCREW YOU.**

**C.bad **


	2. Chapter 2

**Closeted**

**Chapter 2: Skeletons **

Somewhere during the 5th grade, Mr. McKormick had decided that Kenny's deaths were his own fault, and somewhere around five seconds later, Kenny decided that it was his father's genes that attracted death anyway, so FUCK HIM. Fuck him more than most people's parents were fucked because he SUCKED MORE. BITCH.

So that year Kenny began to do things. Bad things. Even if they caused him to die, or caused him excruciating amounts of pain, because if in the end his dad was despairing and getting drunk and making his life even more of a mess, it was completely one hundred percent worth it. Every last screaming nerve ending.

He began by getting his nipple pierced and announcing that he was bisexual.

**0o0**

Lianne "Eight dollars an hour" Cartman felt that her only crime was being too quick to love.

She thought about this as she smoked one of her many crack pipes, leaning against the bars of her jail cell.

It (love) had been happening to her constantly, ever since she'd hit puberty. Innocent, eager, and significantly more developed than other girls, Lianne had fallen in love with Chris.

It was magical. It was fireworks and candy and getting nailed in the movie theatre bathroom. And then it was over.

"I'm sorry Chris," she said, giving him a pity kiss as he leaned, dazed, against a urinal, "I just don't think we work together anymore." Her heart broke a little bit. She might have shed a tear.

The bittersweet sadness of breakup lasted about two days. That was when she met Chevrolet, a gorgeous blonde Raisins girl who required 15 trips to sleazy motels in 3 days. Lianne didn't dump her so much as just leave while she was supposed to be having a threesome with a particularly undesirable man.

But how was she to know that first week when she was 14, what would happen? She had never meant to become like _this_.

_This_ wasn't what life was supposed to be like.

_This_ could not come from following your heart, be it to a gorgeous boy named Chris or out of high school.

"EY!" bellowed an ugly man with a stomach that, when he walked, bounced up to partially hide his face.

Lianne tipped her head back and smiled at him. "Hello Officer Barbrady," she said sweetly, offering the crack pipe up to him. "Would you like some?"

He appeared confused for a second.

"Hmmmm... No thanks. What is that?" he asked politely. "Candy?"

"Yeah. Crack cocaine," Lianne said. Officer Barbrady nodded once and moved along. There was, after all, nothing to see there but a once-beautiful woman with an addiction.

Lianne thought of little Eric, home alone for... how long had it been, now? A week?

Lianne found that she didn't care so very much anymore, and presently she put her head down and hoped bitterly that, for his own sake, Eric never fell in love.

**0o0**

Wendy, being hot, was no novice to boys showing up at her door, but it appeared that she'd become some sort of magnet in the past week.

First it had been Butters, who was sending around a petition to free his fish from prison. Wendy signed because, well, a serial murderer deserved prison, but it was just a poor, innocent little fish who had had no idea what he was doing.

The night Butters visited, Stan had come, complete with a bleeding lip and a duffel bag, to her door.

"Your parents threw you out?" she shrieked. Stan winced. She didn't seem to have come to terms with puberty and was still trying her hardest to speak in the highest octave still audible by the human ear.

"Um—"

Wendy wasn't done. "Just because you play the _piano_?"

"They're—"

"I'm not finished." She cleared her throat and then shrieked again. "La la la la laaa. C shaaaarp. And you want to stay _here_?" She coughed once.

"Yeah. Could you, uhhh, tone down the voice a little? My dad left me a really bad headache when he played gangsta rap as loud as possible in the hopes of 'turning me straight', so I'm not really up to you speaking like a hamster under torture." Stan said, smiling weakly.

Then, that afternoon, Kyle had walked Stan home, and they'd watched TV for two hours before Kyle had to go to hockey practice. Stan had moped in front of the TV for two _more_ hours despite all Wendy's attempts to cheer him up, and then five different boys from the LBGT Lesbian Bisexual Gay Transgender club had come to try and rope him into their organization. Wendy had to explain to five different people that he wasn't gay, he just played the piano. And then she'd had to explain how the two weren't the same thing.

Then Kyle came back with Craig to "check up" on Stan. Because obviously, Wendy couldn't take care of her own boyfriend. They set about making chocolate milk, but in the way that teenage boys do, they ended up with more of a kitchen explosion.

Then they all ran into the basement, giggling like schoolgirls about how they had to take nice, long baths in order to soak the splinters out.

Wendy considered calling the LBGT boys back as she mopped egg salad from the top of the refrigerator.

As it turned out, Craig had tagged along only to steal her parent's honeymoon picture album, their wedding tape, and all of her mother's jewelry. When she confronted him about this, he told her a very long story about how since his parents had divorced he'd been stealing anything that had to do with marriage and burning it.

Wendy kicked him out.

Seconds later, her doorbell rang again. It was Cartman.

"Hi, whore—uh, Wendy," he said, looking very self-consciously aloof. "I was to understand that Stan was staying here."

"Yes...?" Cartman tried (aloofly) to step to the side and peer into her living room. Wendy was reasonably tall, though.

Cartman squinted at her. "Can I see him?"

"Um... he and Kyle are taking a bath..." Cartman's aloof demeanor vanished.

"What? The Jew is trying to upstage me? AGAIN?" He swore, and with a speed people of his girth usually thought was beyond physical ability in this universe, he leapt past Wendy and charged toward the basement. Wendy charged right behind him, wondering how the hell Cartman knew they had a bathroom in their basement.

When she saw Cartman's stiff figure and the writhing mass of flesh in front of him she thought for a moment she'd walked in on Stan and Kyle having sex. In her bathroom.

What Wendy was witnessing was not sex, but in fact the second gayest fistfight in the history of mankind. The first would have happened two months later between Tom Cruise and Dan Rather.

Stan had just punched Kyle across the face when Cartman bellowed, with a tone that should only come from male elephants, "GET OFF MY FRIEND, YOU FUCKING JEW." Kyle looked up, his already huge and tangled hair knotted in places. A small container of body wash was stuck in it.

He let go of Stan, looking disoriented.

"Cartman? Where'd Craig go?"

"He went home, because he stole my mother's jewelry. And her wedding tapes. And her photo album." She glared at Kyle. "You could have told me he was a klepto."

Kyle rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, did you not know about his uninhibited, spontaneous bouts of **kleptomania **that were all over the news last month? _So_ sorry."

"I don't _watch_ the news! It's corrupt! It's all lies!"

"So where _do_ you get the news: _Dirty Prostitute Environmentalist Daily_?" Cartman asked snidely. Then seemed to kick himself hard in the shin.

"NO THAT'S WHERE YOUR MOM GETS HER NEWS!" Wendy snapped, her voice getting raspy from squeaking. Cartman looked rather pleased at her reaction and grinned stupidly.

Wendy turned to Stan. "Stan, tell your … idiots to leave, _please_!"

"Wait, I'm here to console Stan in his time of need," Cartman said quickly. "So I get to stay. Right?" Wendy was tempted to screech, "GO TO HELL!" But she couldn't quite manage it, so she just shook her head.

"No. Stan is here because his parents are blind assholes. No one else can stay."

"Fine. Be that way, tightass." Cartman winced. "Though, you probably can't help it. Seeing as your parents are the biggest tightasses on earth." He'd thought he'd done a reasonable job of patching up his mistake but Wendy just glared at him and said, "I want you—" She pointed at Cartman, "And you," she pointed at Kyle's hair, "To be out of my house in five minutes."

"But—" Cartman whined pitifully, "Wend-y-y-y. How will I console Stan in his time of nee-eed?"

"Well, maybe you should have offered _your _house instead of _barging_ into _hers_," Kyle piped up. "Hey, Wendy, can I use this?" he added, holding up her comb.

"Whatever," Wendy snapped, not caring that the odds of her comb coming out of its ordeal in one piece were well into the negatives. At best.

"My lip is bleeding again," Stan commented, and he sounded duly cheered up. Wendy's mood went from bad to worse. _Cartman_ would cheer up her boyfriend before she did. In fact, Cartman _did_ cheer her boyfriend up before she did, so now, on top of everything else, she was a shitty girlfriend.

"Put a band-aid on it." Her voice had lowered to a natural tone. She threw a box of band-aids at Stan's head.

She shooed Cartman and Stan out of the bathroom, but couldn't budge Kyle from the mirror, where he was trying to figure out which end of the comb to hold.

"But—all of it has little teeth on it!" he wailed. "How am I supposed hold onto it?"

"YOU HOLD IT BY THE TOP, STUPID ASSHOLE. AREN'T JEWS SUPPOSED TO BE SMART??" Cartman bellowed from halfway up the stairs.

The comb, its last hopes of survival cruelly dashed by a fatass, gave a small, despairing comb scream and attempted to save itself by attaching itself to a light fixture.

Kyle, however, had the reflexes borne of a man who frequently grabbed hockey pucks out of midair. The comb never had a chance. Wendy found it in her heart to say a small prayer for it.

Stan thought this was tremendously funny, and Wendy wondered briefly if he was high, because that would be cheating on Kyle's part.

Cartman thought so as well.

"AY! JEW! Did you dope up this mother—er—did you give Stan a joint, you fucking _cheater_?"

"WHAT? NO!" Kyle stomped his foot. "Stan smoked that joint of his own free will!" Wendy and Cartman both made furious lunges at him and he ducked.

"I'm kidding! God! Who likes Stan _that_ much? Even _I_ don't like Stan that much!"

**0o0**

"Fuck," Stan muttered, trying to yank another comb tooth out of Kyle's hair. Kyle had turned on the TV, and was watching—Stan had had no idea there was any such thing—the Jew channel.

"Where'd Cartman go?"

It appeared that Wendy had been so immersed in the slow mystery of the missing comb teeth that she'd completely forgotten about Cartman.

With a shriek, she rushed off, yelling something about tennis bracelets and honeymoons. Stan rolled his eyes.

"Of all the girls," he muttered. "I had to pick the one with the voice that sounds like a dog whistle." Kyle grinned, but Stan couldn't see that because the epic hair impeded his view.

"She's fucking insane, man," he said. "Everybody in this little hick town is. Except maybe me and you. And I speak Hebrew, so I guess I'm out too." Stan shrugged.

"If the teacher has to handcuff you to the table like it's some sort of freaky Jewish sex fantasy, it doesn't count. And besides, the guy who taught it to you was a registered sex offender. So who knows how much of what you learned are actually dirty Korean words. "

"Doesn't matter," Cartman said authoritatively, entering with a bottle of Pepsi in tow. "No matter where he goes or what he does, he carries his Jew germs with him." He took a gulp of the Pepsi and added thoughtfully, "And his Jew gold."

"Dammit, Cartman! For the last time!"

"Don't you deny it, Jew boy!" Cartman said, eyes narrowing. He brandished the bottle of Pepsi. "I saw it! I saw it with my own eyes, you covetous prophet-murderer!"

"That was the compass I keep around my neck, you asshole!"

"I know gold when I hear it!"

"I DON'T HAVE ANY GOLD!" Kyle roared, groping helplessly in his oversized pants for a gun, then realized when he got kicked out of his gang (for having hair that was too big) he got his gun rights taken away.

"I fucking give up," Stan growled. "I can't get any of the comb teeth out, you're just stuck with them in there forever. Unless you try a chainsaw on your hair."

"That's okay. I don't know what happens to things that get stuck in my hair, but I have this feeling my hair eats them, because I never find them again."

Stan believed him. Kyle's head might have, at one point, had individual hairs, but over the years they'd fused to become some sort of flexible solid that periodically seemed to expel snuffly yawns or sleepy noises of disapproval. Carefully, he tried to extract his hand from the inside of Kyle's hair.

Only, it wouldn't come out.

"Ohhmygodohmygodohshitohshit," Stan said, panicking and flailing his limbs around. "KYLE! KYLE! MY HAND IS STUCK IN YOUR HEAD! YOUR HAIR IS EATING MY HAND! KYLE! KYLE! KYLE! DO SOMETHING!"

Kyle was, in the meantime, screaming in pain because Stan had cracked his neck in his effort to get "his goddamn hair off his hand" and also because in his overzealous attempt to get on Stan's good side, Cartman had tackled him and started biting his hair in the hopes that it would release its captive.

And this was the scene Wendy found on her living room carpet as she stumbled down the stairs in search of Cartman.

Panicking because she was a girl and because Stan and Kyle were shirtless, she took the gun from under the couch cushion for her own safety and shot the floor next to Kyle's foot.

All went silent, except for the disgruntled rustling sound of Kyle's hair as Cartman extracted his teeth from it and turned to look at Wendy.

"Okay, honey," he said in his best negotiator's voice. "I want you to drop the gun real slow, and then I want to you to take three big steps back." Wendy did so.

"Thank you," he said. "No one needs to get hurt. Okay? Now I'm just gonna take the gun. Okay? Okay? Just—real slow. Like this. Okay? Just real slow. Okay?"

Stan began to scream again. Loudly.

"My hand," he bellowed. "My hand! They'll have to amputate it. Kyle's hair is like one of those dogs that won't ever let go, even if they die."

"I think that's pigs," Kyle mused obliviously.

Stan ignored him. "I'll never get it back. I'll be handless. I'LL NEVER PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN!!"

Then, burying his face in Cartman's thick shoulder, he proceeded to wail inconsolably.

Cartman, deciding this was a perfect time to show how truly caring he was, Put an arm around Stan in a sympathetic sort of way. "What you have to understand," he said to a bemused Kyle and Wendy, "Is that it's the pianist's equivalent of being castrated."

Kyle's eyes widened even further, then he bowed his head in mourning. Wendy just stared at Stan and wondered how she'd ended up with such an unbelievable pussy as a boyfriend.

No, seriously. He was more of a pussy than the word vagina.

**0o0**

Wow. 

**I never realized there were so many anti-slash SP fans out there.**

**Which, they're all going to be pissed when I announce that this is mainly just going to be everybody running around just being **_**sluts**_**. Stan/Wendy is not going to last long.**

**Hmmm... Sorry?**


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Slash, sweethearts!!

Hear that? SLASH.

SLASH.

That means two people of the same sex, together. Okay? Okay.

**Closeted**

**Chapter 3**

Kenny was considerably more popular than Kyle or Cartman, Kyle said it was because he was prettier than them, in a seen-hell-too-many-times kind of way.

Maybe people liked his orange eyes.

Or his dimples, a lot of people made a big deal out of his dimples. Cartman argued that they were just his face caving in due to starvation.

But Kenny felt that people mostly liked him because he was just fun to party with.

So who fucking cared if he was in a "state of perpetual load-ation" as Stan put it. He was fucking IMMORTAL so who the fuck was worried about him wasting his life away? He wasn't like his father, drinking his sorrows away. He made sure to be _happy_. He did everything in his power to make sure everything he did was something his father wouldn't do, be proud of, or be in any way be happy about...

Which was the reason he did his best to keep the popularity thing under wraps. He felt that, since his dad was trying to live vicariously through his children, he should do his best not to do anything that might make daddy proud.

So the whole shock jock thing was completely unexpected, and made him particularly uncomfortable.

It was an accident—he got a job deejaying at the local top 40 radio station, which everybody listened to, but then one day one of the turntables "went on complete fucking insane violent rampage" and slowly cut his body to shreds as he screamed in agony and cussed his lungs out over the air.

This makes for very good radio.

The next day, his dad woke up from his drunken stupor long enough to see that "Kinny's on the tay-vay, daddy!"

Which he was—he was being asked about saying "faggot" on-air.

Then he said, "Well, they're just words, right… and ain't there some unwritten rule that says it's okay to say 'fag' or 'dyke' or 'nigger' if you _are_ one?"

"So, you're gay, then?" asked the reporter.

He replied by grabbing Clyde, who just happened to be walking by, and placing a hot, fierce kiss on his lips. He licked his lips, then said, "But I wouldn't mind a piece of _that_ ass, either," he said, nodding at her.

And then—it seemed that time sped up—and all of a sudden Clyde was pouting and hot news reporter girl was giving him a hand job on tv.

Which was just fine with him.

It was, in fact, on his List of Things to Achieve.

But all of a sudden, he was famous. All of a sudden, all the things he did normally—bitch and practically orgasm over food and die—were important, and people would actually _care._

And perhaps his father would say "that's mah boy. That's mah Kinny," for the first time in his depraved, drunken life. And Kenny wasn't sure if he could deal with that.

**0o0**

Wendy was just a little bit goth. She'd gotten her eyebrow and nose pierced (subtly). That, apparently, constituted as anti-conformist enough for November, Cross, Henrietta, and Jake. Wendy figured that the fact that she hadn't dyed her hair black accounted for the immediate acceptance.

Wendy really found the goths a little annoying, but when she'd become friends with November, Heidi, Bébé, Sophie and the rest of the girls completely ditched her. Bébé had seemed a little guilty, but when Heidi gave her a look, she'd looked a little pityingly at Wendy and turned her nose up.

And she had felt a little resentful at first. November, like most other things in Wendy's life, had really sort of been a charity case. She'd come to Wendy, who was a junior counselor, because her "mom blackmailed me into this shit".

Wendy had shrugged and informed her that she was really only doing this because it would look good on her resumes and transcripts and whatnot, so they'd spent most of their hour laughing at the real counselor's painfully obvious addiction to whippets and nail polish remover.

So the next week, when November OD'd, Wendy had been obligated to visit, because what would it say if a junior counselor didn't show up to her own patient's hospital room? Harvard might find out!

(Wendy had an idea of Harvard much like a child's idea of Santa Claus—they pumped out successful people like 2pac pumped out posthumous songs! Therefore they were ALL-SEEING GENIUSES.)

So November had spilled it all to Wendy. She was practically still high, and she whispered the whole thing. Wendy had a hard time not staring at the clock—as she was due for dinner in twenty minutes.

But when you're sitting next to a girl who ends her story with "so my mom wouldn't let me press charges and now I do drugs and collect Kenny's abandoned bodies" Wendy couldn't rightly say, "Well, that's really a shame. But now I've got to go home and have dinner with my mom and grandpa, neither of which raped me."

So Wendy had been stuck with November, who turned out to be not _all _bad, and more funny and smart than Bébé, anyway. It didn't matter so much that she was a substance abuser who chased Kenny McKormick with a fervor that even he might have been frightened by. It was just one of the many quirks which Goths seemed to have, like enjoying the taste of kitten blood or praying to demonic lords of the underworld for the deaths of their math teachers.

They were good people, fundamentally.

So that was why she was agonizing over her choice in boys to a girl who was drinking something the same color and consistency of blood and a boy who was staring at the ceiling and chanting like a satanic monk.

"I don't know," Wendy mused. "Craig, Stan… the passion's just not there with them, you know?"

November rarely said anything completely seriously, and played with the label on her bottle as spoke. "Craig and Stan are kind of like your dad was." She glanced up to see how Wendy was taking it, then looked back down and continued. "I didn't know you so well before he died, but I think they're a lot alike."

Wendy blinked, then said, "How Freudian."

"Freud is very anti-conformist," November explained.

"Oh." Wendy said. "So does this mean I'm doomed to boring relationships for the rest of my life?"

"Only thing anyone's doomed to is eternal misery. Not boredom. What you need, sister, is chemistry." She paused and said, far too casually, "You have a lot of chemistry with Eric."

Wendy's first thought was that she didn't know an Eric. Then she realized, "EricCartman?" She yelled incredulously, then knocked over three incense stands shaped like headless saints.

November regarded her warily. "Not lying, Wendy. You know what they say about love/hate relationships."

"Oh, right," Wendy spat contemptuously. "Kenny's just that close to jumping your bones."

November, for all her toughness, was a complete emo goth when it came to Kenny. She sobbed for a straight hour. However, Wendy left when she started to collect her tears in a bottle, so it could possibly have been longer.

**0o0**

Stan and Kyle had waited in the emergency room for three hours. Stan was still shedding some tears as he read a magazine.

_Highlights_ magazine.

"Goofus, you idiot," he muttered brokenly. "You have to wash your feet… what would your mother say? Why can't you be more like Gallant?"

Cartman grimaced and went through a strong internal battle as he glared at the chocolate donuts in his hand, before sighing and handing Stan one in an effort to cheer him up. His hands were shaking and he was biting his lip so hard it bled, but Stan looked at him, eyes refilling.

Cartman decided he couldn't stand with parting with his vending machine snacks any long and accosted a male nurse.

"Sir, my friends over there have been waiting three hours. They'd like a specialist, please."

The nurse looked over at them, and snorted. "Right. Why don't you try a hair salon?"

Cartman folded his arms and said, "Am I to understand you're not going to show us a room?"

The nurse actually hissed and narrowed his eyes. "You, kid," the nurse said, "I know your kind. You come in here, wanting the _cockatoo_ taken out of your ass, wanting the nurses to take a look at your missing hand, well, I'm not naive, kid. I know what you're after." He took a look down the hall, left, right. Then he whispered, "Medical marijuana!"

"Sir, I—what? South Park has medical marijuana?" Cartman said, a hungry look in his eyes. Then he regained his composure.

"Sir, I request that you give my friend a room right this instant!"

"No," the nurse said, eyes narrowing, as he attempted to blow past him, but when Cartman wanted to be, he could appear to be roughly the size of a baby orca whale.

Smiling, he said, "Hey, you know what would really be too bad? If my hit man broke into your house, murdered your children, and raped your wife."

The nurse swallowed, and glanced at Cartman, then gestured for Stan and Kyle to follow him. Stan, wiping his tears away in a hysterical sort of way, was vaguely aware of thanking Cartman.

As the nurse prepared his razor, Kyle felt his hair begin to cling to his scalp. With a rustling sound, it began to plead.

"Ohmygod," it whimpered. "Don't, oh, don't kill me. I'll let go of his hand! I'll eat the people who annoy you most! I'll give you my firstborn! I give great blowjobs! Don't kill me, and I'll give you a blowjob!"

Kyle wasn't used to being offered sexual favors by his own hair. He began to shriek like a madwoman.

The nurse rolled his eyes and brought the shaver closer…

Kyle's hair growled and clung to his scalp. "Okay. I gave you a chance, buddy boy. I'm not gonna let go. I've been practicing for this for YEARS. I know kung fu. I know 10 other—owwww! That's _painful_—oh God—stoooop. Stop iiiiiiiit."

And with a rustling scream and what might have been a sob, Kyle watched his hair's last breaths with tears in his eyes, such a formidable enemy, this one, and brought to its knees in just seconds. It was so sad to see it on the floor, pleading when once it had ruled, and Kyle couldn't look because it was over over over over over.

**0o0**

Kyle's parents were pissed because they hadn't had a hair-bris for the ceremonial shaving of the jewfro.

Kyle pointed out that he hadn't had a bar mitzvah, so if they were going to get all pissy, then they could just spend unreasonable amounts of money on him and he would take the Jewish traditions back up again.

And that was how Kyle came to have his bar mitzvah at the age of 17.

Kenny laughed a lot when he got the invitation and called Kyle not so much to RSVP as humiliate him. "Congratulations on reaching puberty, _young man_… What'd ya do to convince your parents? Glue your 'fro to your crotch?"

Stan called and said pretty much the same thing, with less stoned laughter and a little bit of sympathy.

Cartman called and simply said, "Jew faggot" before slamming down the phone.

But despite the puberty jokes, everybody planned on showing up.

Because Kyle's parents were Jewish, and Jewish people were… well, they were Simply Loaded. Besides, there would most likely be some sort of Jewish alcohol there. As Cartman later said, "Come on. Free booze!"

What he did when he found out that a rabbi had blessed it is another story.

**0o0**

Stan had to sleep at Kenny's because Wendy's parents were back, and his own parents were starting a rally against him. That meant that there were posters of him going around, with the words "piano-humping delinquent" on them, among others.

As a result, at 8 at night, he was crawling through the unsuspecting Kenny's window and saying that he was worried about Kenny "getting addicted to never feeling sad or angry."

Kenny took this completely in stride, and laughed. He laughed first at the utter absurdity, then at the utter gayness.

Then he said, "Who do you think you are? _Worrying _about me… damn, Stan."

Kenny was a little touchy in that respect because "Worried about the drugs you do" almost always came back to "worried about the black eye your dad gave you in a drunken rage last week" which always led to "is someone fucking you without permission?"

To which Kenny always replied, "If somebody gotta fuck, somebody gotta fuck… we're all just fucking-machines anyway. If Uncle Moe and my dad wanna use my body, it's their right…"

Which more often than not dried up the conversation, as nobody was really sure if he was joking.

Anyway, Stan was trying to make Kenny a charity case, which Kenny guessed might have been his right as a friend, but was still very pissed about.

"As a friend, it's my job to help you out of your addiction… to save your soul…"

"Stan!" Kenny yelled incredulously, "I DIE. What is it going to take for you to remember that, you physically retarded Jew?"

Stan started slightly and stared.

"Uh... _what?_" he asked.

"Uh… right… spending a little too much time with Cartman," Kenny laughed and took a joint from his jean's pocket. "Don't worry. I'm as cool with Kyle as the next guy." He lit up and took a hit.

Stan still looked disturbed and Kenny took the opportunity to change the subject.

"So, taking Wendy to Kyle's shindig?" he asked, flopping back on his bed, which gave several ominous splintering sounds.

"Wendy, man," Stan sighed, jumping on the opportunity to bitch like Sally Struthers on Kenny's dead body. "She kicked me out right, cause her parents are coming home today… well, that's what she _said_, but I checked their travel schedule…"

Kenny, at this point, regretted even uttering the first consonant of Wendy's name in front of Stan, and cast around for another topic to switch off to.

He was pleasantly surprised when moments later, Kyle crashed through his wall on a motorcycle. Stan looked like he was going to continue bitching, but Kenny said, "Hey! Stan! Chicks, I know. Love to hear it, but, you know, gotta... tape my wall shut..."

His glared as "Oh-Dear-Lord-Stan-Stopped-Talking" high wore off. Cartman was attempting to climb through his window, and had gotten stuck.

A girly voice came up from behind the epic expanse of flesh that was Cartman's ass.

"You pull, I push."

Kyle did so, and Cartman nearly put a hole in the floor and Bébé's pretty face grinned up at them.

"Bébé!" Stan and Kenny yelled in unison, and both held out a hand to help her in.

"Thanks," she said. "Hey boys," she added to Cartman and Kyle, who scanned her rack and smiled politely at it. She draped herself across Kenny's bed and stole his joint.

Stan groaned. "Not you, too."

Bébé gave him a withering glare. "You know, Stan—"

"Kenny, you poor asshole," Cartman interrupted, obviously furious, "What the _fuck_ was that shit on the news?"

"Yeah, man," Kyle said, equally scandalized. "Nobody needs to hear you get jacked off on tv."

"I thought it was kind of hot," Bébé offered helpfully. Kenny grinned and sat on his dilapidated bureau.

Stan played with his man-jewelry, which looked far too girly for his broad shoulders and wide neck. "You know you're a shock jock now?" he asked.

Kenny rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know. My dad was _so_ pissed." He added proudly. "He only saw the kiss with Clyde.

"Kenny, why do you hate your dad so much?" he asked in his retarded, Stan way.

Kenny ignored him. "Malt beverages," he said loudly. "Who wants one?"

He pulled off his shirt as Bébé and Cartman chided Stan into getting drunk.

Bébé's eyes scraped over his chest briefly, and she said, "As many as you can carry. Kyle, go with him." Jewish pack mule that he was, Kyle obliged and followed Kenny down the hall.

"Kenny, why do you have no shirt on?" Kyle asked.

"So you can admire my pecs and abs," Kenny said. He _did_ have pecs and a six pack, though nobody could tell whether it was from malnourishment or working out.

"I'm very impressed.Why did you take your shirt off?"

That was why Kyle was better than Stan, Kenny thought, because he was persistent. Maybe it came with growing up with Cartman constantly making fun of you, but it was one thing both annoying and admirable about Kyle.

"To piss my dad off." Kenny bent over to examine the fridge. Kyle waited for more as Kenny picked up a glass jar of something yellow and soupy and threw it carelessly into the overflowing trash can.

He continued conversationally, "The nipple ring. He associates it with me liking… being _bisexual._" Kyle raised an eyebrow, something that Kenny had never seen before.

"Hey!" he said, pointing and nearly going into cardiac arrest at the same time, "Your eyebrow!"

Kyle's raised eyebrow twitched. "So?"

"Your hair always covered it up before." Kenny rummaged in the fridge for a while, and passed some liquor back. "Did I tell you yet how much sexier you look without monster hair eating your head?"

"Uh, no you did not," Kyle said, taking two 40 oz bottles and a six pack of liquor as Kenny passed them back.

"You looked like... like your hair was a hamburger, and your face was the bottom of a hamburger bun," Kenny said conversationally.

"I see…" Kyle's fingers slipped over a bottle as Kenny's drunk dad stumbled into the kitchen.

"Kinny," he growled. Kyle sensed a fight. "I saw you on the telly-vision tiday." Kenny grinned and idly flicked his nipple ring.

He didn't answer, instead extracted a beer from the fridge, much as one would take out a steak to tempt a vicious dog. He opened it and left on the counter.

"You told me that earlier," he said.

"Yeah," his dad said drunkenly, reaching for the beer. Kenny scooted it an inch out of reach, but his dad got up in his face.

"I… didn't raise you to be… to be… like _that_," he growled. Kenny laughed lightly and turned toward the fridge.

"You didn't raise me at all."

His father took a wild, stumbling swing at his head; then teetered toward the table and passed out before his head hit the floor. Kenny kicked him in the ribs, looking amused. He reached for the beer and set it by his father's face.

Kyle, who was used to this sort of scene, looked uncomfortable.

Kenny shrugged. "Not having parents bitching all over your ass all the time makes up for your dad being the fucking douchebag drunk of your cunt-sucking town."

Kyle nodded, but he'd known Kenny for 16 years, and whenever he got flustered, or whenever someone stole his porn, his cussing increased tenfold.

"I could get that," he said, trying to choose his next words in a way that wouldn't alert Kenny to the fact Kyle was trying to get him the fuck out of this house.

However, Kenny was staring at him; spontaneously, he ran a hand over his newly shaven, fuzzy head. "Weird," he said, and leaned in closer to examine. He was close enough for one of the beer caps to dig into his exposed skin.

Kyle was freaked out by that. And the fact that Kenny, who laughed everything off, was uncomfortable.

Kenny leaning down and kissing him, well, that didn't help, either.

Kyle stared for a moment into Kenny's bright orange, wide open eyes. Then he yelped loud enough to be heard in Alaska. An Alaskan dropped it's fish, and Kyle backed up rapidly, stumbling over one of the missing linoleum on the floor and falling on his ass.

"Dude!" he yelled, wiping his mouth on his shoulder, because his arms were full of bottles. "Wh—why… what… _what?_"

Kenny shrugged.

"I kissed you," he informed him.

"Wha—yeah, I noticed!" Kyle said. He was starting to blush, pushing himself to his feet. Vermin scurried around his feet. "I—what the fuck is a guy supposed to do?"

Kenny shrugged again, not looking in the least ashamed or nervous. More like... stoned.

"Your call," he said.

Kyle searched for words, but all he could come up with that didn't sound like a pity fest was, "Man—shit, dude—Hell fucking no!"

"Yeah, okay," Kenny said, grinning. "If you say so." He brushed past him on his way back to his room.

Kyle shook his head and wiped his mouth on his shoulder again, then again.

And one more time.

**0o0**

**End. Byotch.**

**Somebody please tell me if their ages change or something.**


End file.
